1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink cartridge exchanging apparatus used with an image forming device, and more particularly, to an ink cartridge exchanging apparatus used with an image forming device, which can minimize a working space to exchange an ink cartridge, thereby reducing a size and a height of the image forming device.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming device using ink, for example, an ink jet printer 1, prints by ejecting ink onto a sheet of recording paper. The ink is ejected through a print head 2 while moving a carriage 3, having an ink cartridge 4 mounted thereon, at right and left directions along a carriage shaft 7 and a sliding bracket 9a of a support frame 9 by a carriage motor (not shown) connected with the carriage 3 through a carriage moving belt (not shown), as shown in FIG. 1. At a lower part of the ink cartridge 4 is disposed the print head 2. During such a printing operation, when the ink cartridge 4 completely uses up ink, it must be exchanged with a new one.
Generally, the exchange operation of the ink cartridge 4 is carried out by opening a cover door 5 disposed at an upper part of the ink jet printer, pushing an ink cartridge exchanging button (not shown) on a control panel (not shown) to apply an electric power to the carriage motor to move the carriage 3, having the ink cartridge 4 mounted thereon from a service position for maintenance, to an ink cartridge exchanging position by the carriage moving belt, releasing a fixing apparatus (not shown) to mount the ink cartridge 4 on the carriage 3, raising and removing the used ink cartridge 4 from the carriage 3, and then mounting a new ink cartridge 4 in the carriage 3.
At this point, the cover door 5 can be opened after the carriage 3 is moved from the service position to the ink cartridge exchanging position by pushing the ink cartridge exchanging button.
However, such a conventional ink jet printer 1 presents a problem that in order to exchange the used ink cartridge 4, the cover door 5 is opened upwardly toward an upper part of the printer and then the ink cartridge 4 is raised from the carriage 3, and a working space to exchange the ink cartridge 4 grows large, thereby resulting in increasing a size, particularly a height of the printer.
Also, since the conventional ink jet printer 1 needs a space to raise the used ink cartridge 4 from the carriage 3, there is a problem that it is difficult to meet various design demands, which are currently getting more and more increasing in the art, such as allowing the image forming device to have a flat facing, or to have the image forming device built in other devices.